The Eclectus parrot’s personality is almost as vibrant as its beautiful colours. Tim Falk finds out more about this gorgeous bird.
If you’re looking for a lovable companion bird, the Eclectus parrot is well worth considering. Intelligent, energetic and friendly, this gorgeous parrot boasts a wonderful combination of good looks and a winning personality that has seen it become an increasingly popular pet.
Feeling right at home in tropical rainforest, the Eclectus is native to the northern Cape York Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and even parts of Indonesia. There are nine subspecies of this beautiful parrot, headlined by the breathtakingly beautiful Grand Eclectus (Eclectus roratus roratus).
For the right owner, the Eclectus parrot can make a wonderful companion. “I love their personalities and their vibrant colours,” says Lisa Woodworth from Temple Aviaries. “Being a dimorphic parrot, it is easy to tell the males from the females and both genders are astonishingly beautiful. There is a variety of personality types, just as with members of a human family, but for the most part I would characterise them as calm, thoughtful birds with a clownish side. They are not into ‘drama’ like Amazons and Cockatoos, for example.”
An eclectic species
Have you ever heard the old saying about men being from Mars and women from Venus? Well, the male and female Eclectus parrots look so different from one another that they were actually considered to be two diff erent species for a long time. While the males are green with red undersides on their wings and a bright-orange beak, females are a combination of stunning blue and bright red fi nished off with a black beak. We now know these two very different-looking birds are in fact the same species, and happen to be the most sexually dimorphic (when two sexes of the same species exhibit different characteristics) parrot species anywhere in the world. It’s this fact that gives the Eclectus parrot its name, which is taken from the word “eclectic”.
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